sundance ff 2026 – ALLIANCE OF WOMEN FILM JOURNALISTS

AANIKOOBIJIGAN [Ancestor/Great Grandparent/Great Grandchild] (Sundance FF 2026) – Review by Leslie Combemale

February 3, 2026February 3, 2026 Leslie Combemale AANIKOOBIJIGAN [Ancestor/Great Grandparent/Great Grandchild], Adam Khalil, documentary, Michigan Anishinaabek Cultural Preservation and Repatriation Alliance, Ojibway, sundance ff 2026, Zack Khalil

Is archeology a crime? Based on the documentary AANIKOOBIJIGAN [Ancestor/Great Grandparent/Great Grandchild], there’s an argument to be made that it often is. In the film, Ojibway brother directing team Adam and Zack Khalil reveal the ongoing commitment by native populations to repatriate the hundreds of thousands of their ancestors’ bones, and give them a proper burial. Laws about returning indigenous bones are on their side, but with all the red tape and defensive museum and college archive officials working against them, getting their ancestors back is harder than you’d imagine. What tribal representative and leaders see as desecration of their relations, museum specialists and archeologists see as the important study of research objects.

Festivals Reviews

BEDFORD PARK (Sundance FF 2026) – Review by Leslie Combemale

February 3, 2026February 3, 2026 Leslie Combemale Bedford Park, Moon Choi, Son Sukku, Stephanie Ahn, sundance ff 2026

Healing through the comfort and support of an equally messed up person, the yoke of family obligation, and the exploration of the uniquely Korean emotional concept of Han, are all part of what makes writer/director Stephanie Ahn’s drama Bedford Park so memorable. This is a film and these are characters that stay with you. Ahn’s film overcomes a few contrivances and unnecessary complications in the process of telling a beautiful love story about two people finding each other. Each is possibly the only other human being that could mend their many broken pieces. At its core, Bedford Park is the story of the collision of two wounded souls, and how they help each other go beyond the pains of their separate pasts.

Festivals Reviews

BIG GIRLS DON’T CRY (Sundance FF 2026) – Review by Leslie Combemale

February 3, 2026February 4, 2026 Leslie Combemale Ani Palmer, Big Girls Don’t Cry, Paloma Schneideman, sundance ff 2026

Writer/director Paloma Schneideman’s coming of age drama Big Girls Don’t Cry, which premiered in the World Cinema Dramatic Competition at 2026 Sundance, is awkward from the first to the last frame, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Set in rural New Zealand in 2006, it follows 14 year old Sid Bookman as she navigates her world and burgeoning sexuality during early-era social media, cell phone use and messaging. The film is a constant reminder of what a train wreck online use has been for teens from day one. This is demonstrated in one of the first scenes, in which Sid interacts with a 30-something (aka pedophile) masturbating to her voice. Sid is curious, self-destructive, desperate to belong, has little impulse control, and has access to the web. That’s a recipe for disaster.

Festivals Reviews

HA-CHAN, SHAKE YOUR BOOTY! (Sundance FF 2026) – Review by Sherin Nicole

February 3, 2026February 3, 2026 Sherin Nicole Alberto Guerra, Alejandro Edda, ballroom competition, Ha-chan, Ha-Chan Shake your Booty!, Josef Kubota Wladyka, Rinko Kikuchi, Shake Your Booty!, sundance ff 2026, tokyo

director Josef Kubota Wladyka’s Ha-chan, Shake Your Booty!, the kawaii (super cute) and quirky story revolves around Haru (Rinko Kikuchi), whose husband, Luis (Alejandro Edda), quite literally expires while they’re dancing in a Tokyo ballroom competition. So yeah, the duality of sweet and bitter is present from the start. Another point of duality is the contrast between Luis’ life in Japan with Haru, and his upbringing in Mexico with his father and sister. Who gets to decide which life represented him best, his wife or his family by blood? Throughout this comedically surreal runtime, we’re treated to wild hallucinations, big dance numbers, sensual daydreams, and a desperate recklessness that Haru can’t help but be drawn into. Ha-Chan’s story is about the lies we tell ourselves when we can’t face the guilt or the devastation of surviving, and the fantastical—although artificial—pocket universes we create when we wish things had gone a different way.

Festivals Reviews

JANE ELLIOTT AGAINST THE WORLD (Sundance FF 2026) – Review by Leslie Combemale

February 3, 2026February 3, 2026 Leslie Combemale civil rights advocate, Jane Elliott, JANE ELLIOTT AGAINST THE WORLD, Judd Ehrlich, sundance ff 2026

Jane Elliott first made headlines and pissed a lot of people off in 1968 when she was a teacher in the rural Iowa town of Riceville. After the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., she heard a fellow teacher say, “It’s about time someone shot him”.
That was, in part, the inspiration for her to teach her all-white class about bigotry and racism with an exercise called the “Blue Eyed Brown Eyed experiment”. The experiment divided all students into two categories, with one eye color wearing a collar and being treated as inferior, then switching groups, so that both knew what it was like to be a person of color and discriminated against in America.

Festivals Reviews

JOSEPHINE (Sundance FF 2026) – Review by Leslie Combemale

February 3, 2026February 4, 2026 Leslie Combemale Beth de Araújo, Channing Tatum, gemma chan, JOSEPHINE, Mason Reeves, sundance ff 2026

Josephine isn’t “an easy sit”. As hard as it is to watch the fallout from 8 year old Jo’s witnessing sexual assault, audiences and jurors at Sundance approved of her cinematic take. They awarded the experience with the Grand Jury Prize and the Audience Award in the US Dramatic category. A raw and insightful examination of female fear and male aggression, the plot begins with the moment in which the title character becomes wildly and permanently aware of the dangers this world presents.

Festivals Reviews

LADY (Sundance FF 2026) – Review by Leslie Combemale

February 3, 2026February 3, 2026 Leslie Combemale Alana Mejía González, Amanda Oruh, Jessica Gabriel’s Ujah, LADY, Lagos Nigeria, Olive Nwosu, sundance ff 2026

Writer/director Olive Nwosu’s neo-noir Lady is a raw character study full of life and color. In Lady’s corner of the world, the teeming metropolis of Lagos Nigeria, Nwosu presents a place as assured and celebratory as it is one of risks and dangers. Lady comes from a strong female gaze, focusing on duality, male vs female, the individual vs the collective, and the interior vs the exterior lives of the film’s characters, especially as it relates to gender. These characters are postering as strong in a world where women are often reduced to objectifying themselves in order to survive, while trying to allow themselves to show vulnerability and trust with each other.

Festivals Reviews

SOUL PATROL (Sundance FF 2026) – Review by Leslie Combemale

February 3, 2026February 3, 2026 Leslie Combemale 51st Infantry, Company F, documentary, Ed Emanuel, Emerson Branch Jr., J.M. Harper, John Willis, Lawton Mackey Jr, Norman Reid, Soul Patrol, Soul Patrol: The Riveting True Story of the First African American LRRP Team in Vietnam, sundance ff 2026, Thad Givens, Willie Brown

Soul Patrol captures a part of the Vietnam conflict too rarely discussed or portrayed either then or now, the experience and memories of Black soldiers. Though the many different ways in which filmmaker J.M. Harper relays the story can become confusing, it’s clear mixing authentic footage and reenactments was in the service of bringing these men’s experiences to life onscreen. It’s the men themselves, talking as if it was yesterday, that will move audiences and shine a light on their valor and their sacrifice.

Festivals Reviews

TO HOLD A MOUNTAIN (Sundance FF 2026) – Review by Leslie Combemale

January 26, 2026January 25, 2026 Leslie Combemale Biljana Tutorov, documentary, Montenegro, Petar Glomazić, Sinjajevina plateau, sundance ff 2026, To Hold a Mountain

The first notable thing about Biljana Tutorov and Petar Glomazić’s observational documentary To Hold a Mountain is the breathtaking landscapes. Filmed in and around the highlands of Montenegro on the Sinjajevina plateau, the topography has an ancient, almost mystical quality. That’s where shepherdess Gara and her adoptive daughter Nada work and connect with the land of their heritage. The film’s framework is around the struggle to keep this land protected. A Montenegrin plan to use the heretofore Unesco-protected land for a military training ground and shooting range is threatening their livelihood and pristine landscape. It is true that Gara becomes a leader in the fight to “hold a mountain”, and keep Sinjajevina sacred and unspoiled, but that is just the stepping off point for a deeper exploration of personal struggles.

Festivals Reviews

THE OLDEST PERSON IN THE WORLD (Sundance FF 2026) – Review by Leslie Combemale

January 26, 2026January 25, 2026 Leslie Combemale documentary, sam green, sundance ff 2026, sundance film festival 2026, THE OLDEST PERSON IN THE WORLD

There have been other films that document the lives of the world’s oldest people, but those are more about cracking the secret of how they’ve survived for so long. In the philosophical considerations around his own fragility, and the persistent sadness of his loss, filmmaker Sam Green reframes the worldwide fascination with the oldest people in the world into something deeply personal. How he, or, as he hopes, his descendants will continue to do that in subsequent films of the series remains to be seen.

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